To Sleep and Perchance Not To Dream
by teecrushfic
Summary: Harry's dreams have become nightmares, thanks to Tom Riddle. But maybe, just maybe, the nightmares aren't that bad.


**To Sleep and Perchance to Not Dream**

Harry knows that once upon a time, sleep was a good thing, a time when his problems dropped away and he could dream that he was just an ordinary kid, an ordinary wizard who could look forward to a long, pleasant enough life; a life filled with work, family, happiness – all the things a normal person would want.

He knows that sleep is supposed to be restorative and blissful. But his is not. Not anymore.

Since Tom Riddle learned how to enter his mind in dreams, Harry Potter has learned that sleep can be a time of exquisite pain, of torture, of fear. A time when he is made to do things that he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams, and endure misery that none should have to live through.

If he could die in these dreams, he would. But alas, he always wakes, just to dream again.

~ 0 ~

_The laughter is cruel and mocking, and Harry is used to it by now; it used to enrage him and he would lash back, but all that produced was more laughter, and sometimes, pain._

_He is naked, chained to a device that looks rather like a medieval torture rack, if Crate and Barrel made instruments of torture. Scrolled black ironwork, it hangs from the ceiling of the stone-lined room in what he can only assume is a dungeon of sorts. The walls are ringed by benches – primitive enough, but always filled with people. He knows the names – MacNair, Goyle, Crabbe, Lestrange, Carrow, Rookwood, Avery … he knows there are more, but those are the names he remembers, because they crow the loudest when he whimpers. The Carrows have even been known to approach him as he hangs there, limp and spent, and touch his face with their foul-smelling fingers._

_They enjoy the taste of his tears – to them, they're sweeter than Honeyduke's finest chocolates._

~ 0 ~

The first time Riddle came to him in a dream, Harry had laughed; he remembers this. He had told him, in no uncertain terms that he wasn't real, and anyway, to get the fuck out of his head. But Riddle hadn't moved, only smiled. And the smile wasn't bad, actually – this was Riddle, the handsome dark-haired boy from the Chamber, not the pale, scaly entity from Little Hangleton.

"You will be mine, Harry Potter," Riddle had said with a sweet smile. "In every way possible, you will be mine."

Then, he had been gone, and Harry had woken abruptly and blinked hard before shaking his head and turning over. And Riddle had not come again that night.

The second time he had come, Harry hadn't even let him speak before banishing him with an "Avada Kedavra!" Riddle had disappeared in a flicker of green flame and again, Harry had fallen back to sleep and slept more or less peacefully for the remainder of the night.

The third time he had come – that was when Harry's dream life became an unending nightmare.

~ 0 ~

When Riddle had smiled at him, there had been something different in the smile, something Harry instinctively knew to be afraid of. Riddle had reached out his hand and Harry had backed away, but Riddle kept coming until Harry's feet froze to the ground and he could no longer move. The icy cold hand had closed around his wrist and Harry had slumped to the ground.

When he wakes – perhaps 'came to' is a better phrase because Harry is never sure that he truly wakes – he is tied down, spread-eagled on a bed that has seen better days. The iron bedstead is rusted, the mattress stained and thin – Harry can feel springs trying to break through the cloth.

He has the distinct sensation of being conscious, yet not awake. This must be a dream. There is no other explanation

He is alone in the room, which could only be considered a room by the most generous standards – it is a cell and there is one lone window way up high, through which pale light struggles through.

Harry struggles against his bonds, but rusty chains foil even the most determined man's efforts and common sense tells him not to waste his energy on futile attempts; he can do nothing but wait.

His arms are stretched, but it's not painful – yet. He doesn't have his glasses, which in a way is a good thing, because he doesn't want to know too much.

From somewhere beyond his sight range, a shadow appears and materializes in front of him and he stiffens, recognizing the face.

Tom Riddle smiles down at him, and Harry mentally counts himself lucky that it is Riddle and not the reconstituted Voldemort, who bears a striking resemblance to his beloved Nagini.

Riddle is still as handsome as he was back in the Chamber, four long years ago; dark curly hair, deep brown, nearly black eyes, full lips. He looks like a subject for a painting, or a poem. It's the way he carries himself, the way he expects to be noticed. He is beautiful in a way that few people, and even fewer men are, and against his will, Harry's cock twitches at the way Riddle looks at him.

He counters these traitorous thoughts by glaring back up at Riddle, whose lip curls almost imperceptibly. "Now Harry," he says his voice a soft hiss, sibilant in a way it was not before, back in the day. "Surely you are not surprised at where you find yourself. I told you I would have you, and now I do."

Harry sneers. "This isn't real," he hisses back. "This is a dream, a nightmare, and nothing more. Any moment now I'll wake and you'll be relegated to wherever nightmares go in the light."

He should be more forceful, demand to be released, but his mind seems sluggish, slow, and stringing together those few sentences together is ridiculously difficult – he settles for glaring rather than trying to speak again.

The smile that was hovering before, now breaks into the real thing. "If that is what you need to believe, then, lovely Harry, hold fast to that thought. Cherish it; keep it in the forefront of your mind."

He sits down then, on the mattress next to Harry, his black robes floating around him and settling to the dirty stone floor; the springs creak and shift alarmingly, but Riddle doesn't seem to notice.

His eyes sweep up and down Harry's body, and then a hand emerges from the depths of the robe; Riddle wears a glove of a type Harry has never seen before. It exposes the tip of the finger, but the base of the finger is covered with a mesh sort of material, laid over the black velvet.

Harry finds himself staring at that glove until soft fingers start gliding over his torso, tracing the abdominal muscles, the flat hard planes of his chest. Harry tries to breathe deeply; he is not aroused, he tells himself. This is Riddle, his foulest enemy, and regardless of his form, he is nothing more than evil with physical substance.

However, his body does not differentiate between friend and foe, and his cock responds to the touches, the nerve endings in his body tingling, and soon it lays against his stomach, hard and leaking.

This pleases Riddle; his fingers move downwards, and pleasure-drugged Harry waits for the fingers to rub over the head of his cock and then slide down the shaft, slippery and warm. Therefore the pain that he experiences shocks him and he yelps.

"There is no pleasure without pain, Harry, didn't you know?" The metal mesh is rough and unforgiving, and it burns and chafes as Riddle wraps his hand around Harry and begins to stroke – the touch may be gentle enough, but the pain is intense.

"Stop," Harry whispers, his lips dry, but Riddle just smiles and licks his own, then dips his head to run a pointed tongue around the head, swiping at the ridge just under it; his lips come away tinged with blood and semen, and the long tongue licks it away as though it were butter cream frosting.

Harry stares at Riddle's lips, trying to ignore how much his cock stings, yet how hard he still is; all that Riddle has done is increased his need.

"You enjoy pain, don't you, Harry? I am not surprised, not surprised at all. You can take enormous amounts of it too, can you not?"

The mesh fingers are rubbing against his nipples, and Harry moans, his body arching up. "Please," he says, although whether he wants Riddle to stop or go on is unclear – and Riddle doesn't ask.

He stands though, and in the brief reprieve, Harry feels the pain of two of his most sensitive areas being abraded and bloodied. He closes his eyes tight and again concentrates on breathing.

When the springs creak again, he opens his eyes; the robe is gone, and the pristine white shirt, Slytherin tie and black trousers remain; he sees the trousers only momentarily as Riddle straddles him and places his hands on his shoulders, pinning them to the mattress.

The chains do hurt now; they pull at his arm sockets and Harry tries to twist his body to relieve the pressure, but Riddle has him fast.

For a long moment, they lock eyes, Riddle's plainly stating that he has Harry immobilized and there is nothing he can do … and Harry's just as plainly stating that he has plenty of fight left in him. The full lips of his captor turn up again, and this time, the smile is not friendly at all.

The sudden sharp pain of his nipples being literally bitten, and hard, makes his body jerk up, and Riddle counters by resting all his body weight on Harry's hips and grinding against him.

Breathing slowly is no longer an option, and Harry moans again as Riddle continues grinding against him, his abused cock aching all the more for being full. "Either," Harry pants, "either stop or get me off, you sadistic bastard."

"Name calling? How rude." Riddle shakes his head and lets go of Harry's shoulders, making him sigh in relief; the relief is short lived because the gloved hand grips him again and begins jerking him off, with swift, rough strokes, each one bringing more blood to the surface.

The moans now are mixed with whimpers as the pain begins to overpower any pleasure and Riddle raises one finger slicked with Harry's juices and slides it into Harry's open mouth. "The taste of fear and pain," he says softly. "Intoxicating, is it not?"

"No," Harry manages to gasp because his orgasm is starting to approach and crest, and his body is beginning to shake.

Riddle moves back slightly, so that his weight now rests on Harry's thighs and trails two fingers – thankfully not gloved – around Harry's balls, rolling them between them roughly, making Harry bite down on his own lip harder because he is willing to let go of the sounds of arousal, but he'll be damned if he'll cry out in pain.

He won't give Riddle that; not tonight. In nights to come, an extraordinary amount of sounds will issue from his lips, some satisfying to his dream captor, some not.

The soft stroking of his perineum is unexpected, and for a moment, he can breathe, concentrating on that moment of relief amidst the pain – which makes the rough, dry penetration of his ass all the more shocking and Harry thrashes, his head and shoulders whipping from side to side as he tries not to scream.

The spurt of hot, thick liquid onto his stomach and chest follows the bolt of pain from the intrusion of Riddles finger, and Harry cannot hold it back anymore; the sound that emits from him is a howl of pleasure, pain, anger and humiliation. It echoes off the stones and seems to hang in the air with a force of its own.

It's the loveliest music Riddle has ever heard; screams of fear and pain have their place, but this is something even more raw and primal. It is the core of Harry Potter.

The white shirt is spattered now with blood and come, and Riddle's pale skin is flushed.

He vanishes the chains that hold Harry, and waits.

Two trembling hands come up and slide around his neck – any moment they will close and crush his larynx, or rip out his jugular. The magic that pulses from this boy, this child, is beyond any he has ever felt, but this is a dream world after all, and in such a world even he feels fear.

He is bitten, and hard, the lips bruising his, the teeth sharp; Harry kisses him frantically, plunging his own bleeding tongue into Riddles' mouth, swirling it around, his hands vises on Riddle's neck.

Harry is pulled down, down deeper, further into the dream until reality is but a memory and pain, pleasure, blood and come are all he knows to be true.

~ 0 ~

Waking is a relief, but with it comes something that could almost be called regret.

Sometimes Riddle displays him for his followers; to show them, reassure them that the Boy Who Lived is already his, and that the reality of the waking world is just a formality. These are the times he is crueler than usual - these are the mornings when Harry wakes, bruised and sometimes scarred.

Sometimes it is just he and Riddle again in that dingy room, where the mattress is no less thin, and now bears the marks of their struggles; blood, dark stains of sweat, the sticky sourness of old semen, dried and crusted.

And sometimes Riddle does not come at all; those are the mornings when Harry wakes and his pillow is wet with sweat and tears.

Loneliness creates its own demons, and Harry's wage war for his soul day and night.

~End~

7


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